The Exciting, Expositionary Expedition Into Exodus … Starts Now

This is a cross post from the church blog I write for. But perhaps it will ignite in you a passion for the Exodus?

Carry on …

September 17, 2012 …..

The expected arrival date of Grandbaby Coats has me waxing a bit nostalgic, thinking back to the time when my kids were little carpet crawlers, and their favorite story was Doctor Dan, The Bandage Man. We read that book in the car, at nap time, at bed time, snack time, at the doctor’s office … and if I didn’t have it with me, I simply quoted it. Because I’m telling you, I could recite the whole story under general anesthesia …

Dan is a busy fellow. He is always on the go. But one day, in a big backyard cowboy fight, he fell and scratched his finger on his make-believe gun …

Hmmm …

Either old age has hit, or too many years have gone by, because I get stuck after “make-believe gun.” I can remember a few lines from the middle, from the ending, but most of the mental pages are simply … blank.

Forgotten …

like other stories of old, in the front of the Bible … the ones we heard week in and week out, back when we were crawling shag carpets. And like Dr. Dan, The Bandage Man, the details are beginning to slip the mind and the true tales have been set aside and we’ve gone on to the New, to books … more relevant?

When did the New Testament became more applicable ~more interesting~ than the Old?

I don’t know the answer. But when the Preacher announces he’ll begin a two-year Exodus exposition starting this Sunday, I realize it’s been too long since I studied the book and I look around and your bug-eyed stare tells me it’s possibly been a while since you studied the book and then .. I picture Moses. Because if there’s only one thing I do remember, it’s that Exodus is largely about the life of the baby in the basket.

I open the Book and I see it there in the forty chapters of the second book of Moses – so much more than a baby in a basket, rescued by the daughter of the hardhearted, people-hoarding Pharaoh. There, scattered across the pages, I see …

the bush, raging with a flame of fire but never consumed …

a rod, morphing into a serpent and back to a rod in the obedient hand of Moses …

plague after nasty plague of lice and locusts, flies and frogs, hail and boils …

six hundred choice chariots and all the Israelite children, crossing the dry bed of the Red Sea, walls of water on their left and right hands (have you ever thought that God is a perfect gentleman, the way He dried the bed of that sea?) …

bitter waters made sweet …

bread from heaven …

water from the rock …

the writing of the Law (I wish God would tell me what to write like that) …

This is just the first half of the book, peeps. And this real-life drama – it makes Harry Potter seem about as thrilling as a Philadelphia phone book … nothing but a good sleep sedative.

No offense to Miss J.K. …

I skim the remaining twenty chapters of the Exodus, and I’m fairly convinced the next twenty four months will be an exposition … and an expedition, both. An exciting, wonder-filled, God-revealing trip through the wilderness and across that Red Sea and … okay, okay … plagues and manna and hard work erecting tabernacles, making bronze lavers, gold lampstands, and many other tasks on every day but the Sabbath. But …

it’s still better than the Philly phone book.

So gear up. Be bold and daring and go where no man has gone before read through those forty chapters. Refresh the memories of your carpet crawling, Sunday School years … before Sunday. Because there’s no reason this expedition can’t start right here … right now.